A precious child needs sponsor

Over the last couple of months I have lost 9 of my Correspondent children. I expect this might be a reflection on Australia's economy as I have been writing to these children for several years and suddenly their sponsors can no longer sponsor them. I have been blessed with 5 new little people but it is hard to say goodbye knowing they will now be waiting for some time for a new sponsor who may or may not write.

 

One of these children and his family really need the love and support of a kind loving sponsor who will write frequently and encourage this little family. I will tell you a little about him in the hope he may steal someone heart from here and hopefully someone who loves writing.

 

Jeisson

 

Age 10 - 2013

I have been writing to Jeisson for several year, he lives in El Salvador and is now 10 years old. He writes detailed wonderful letters every 1 –2 months and answers your questions and puts lots of detail about his life. He has a loving little family and takes huge responsibility for them already. Jeissons Dad was already gone when I first started writing to him, it was just him and his Mom, then Dad returned for a short time and Jeisson was over the moon. He left again within a few months and I haven’t heard anything of him in the last couple of years. During the time of his return Jeissons Mom got pregnant and Jeisson was so excited about having a brother or sister, it seemed to overshadow the fact his father had gone again. When his little sister arrived it was evident she has special needs and later I learned she had down syndrome and a few other problems. She goes to the hospital twice a week for treatment.

 

This dear little boy is doing very well at school and wants to become a lawyer so he will have enough money to support his mom and sister for ever. He is so sincere and determined that he will look after his little family and he is ONLY 10.

 

I wish I had a budget that could support him until he finishes school and keep in contact with him and his Mom. His Mom occasionally writes or sends messages through Jeisson.  I also have a lovely photo of Jeisson with his Mom and little sister which I will happily email to anyone who might sponsor Jeisson. If you would like to sponsor this wonderful little boy contact me and I will give you his number, he will be on the Australian site but I am sure he could be transferred to another site/country if your heart is drawn to him. I am sure he will bless you as much as you will bless him, I will miss his sweet letters.

 

 

Jeisson- Age 8- 2012

 

Children Outdoors Inspiration!

 

 I spent today listing to the inspirational speakers Claire Warden and Niki Buchan who are leaders in Early Childhood Education, they are known around the world for their work in reconnecting children with nature.

 

What a play ground!

As I listened it struck me that our Compassion children suffer from many things, poverty, lack of clean water, lack of clothes, lack of safe homes, parents with no work or low incomes, malnutrition, lack of basic resources but in one way their life styles echo what our children lives lack. They don’t have the resources, like mega amounts of shop bought toys the TV and electronic games our children have. Their playground is the natural environment with rocks, sticks, sand and mud, climbing trees and helping out with household chores that involve 100% nature. These children face mighty challenges yet you see the joy in their faces as they play and there is not a commercial toy in sight.

Kingston Beach

 

I think we can learn a lot from these children and listening to Claire and Niki today made this all the more clear. Claire talked about boys needing to play with toy guns and bows and arrows  as this was part of their brain structure a basic instinct to them, from role play they begin to understand the real world. Claire talked about many centres and schools banning “Superheros” but research shows that boys need this type of role play to develop and it is just as important as fairy dress ups and ballerina costumes. She spoke on how we tended to often provide opportunities from the girls interests like home corners and dolls but we tend to over look the boys who would like toy hammers, tools etc as they are seen as dangerous.

 

In the developed world we tend to wrap our children in cotton wool all to worried about the dangers of every day life that we end up depriving our children of a healthy childhood. We make sure there is no danger by putting up high fences, draining puddles, putting soft fall everywhere and keeping climbing structures to a minimum or not at all. Swings have been removed from most schools yet research show that a child needs rhythmic motion to help the brain develop. Children are discouraged from climbing in case they fall or can’t achieve it so feel failure.

 

Claire believes we should be teaching our children to manage danger themselves, learn to make their own judgements on how high to climb or if they should jump a puddle– we are not preparing our children for life if they never have to make choices and feel a little ‘failure’-or more to the point, if something didn’t work  they will try again using another strategy– not failure!

 

Our Compassion children do this every day, many of them are home alone with siblings while parents work, they play in their environment without adults wrapping them in cotton wool, they learn to risk manage, enjoy the land they live in, run, jump and skip becoming strong and responsible. Their world is terrible on so many fronts but enjoying the environment and staying safe in it is something they could teach our children.

 

If you ever get the chance to listen to Claire Warden or Niki Buchan speak I would encourage you to attend as she is a very inspiring speaker and has so many wonderful ideas that will make the world a far more interesting and learning place for our children.

 

Motherhood

Motherhood

 

The first smile that's not just expelled air,

The softness of the newborn's hair,

The perfect tiny hands,

That will one day grow to be a man's.

 

My precious children today!

Then how fast they grow,

Crystal and breakables up they go,

Then "no" is a favourite word,

How often is that heard?

 

The hassles of the runny nose,

Dirty boots and torn clothes,

Long nights as fevers blaze,

Infanthood slips into a haze.

 

All to soon the school bell rings,

Uniforms, frogs, books and slimy things,

Swift the change as independence starts,

Mother and child are prized apart.

 

A new world of learning and friends,

Of challenges not all with good ends,

Of tests of values and ways,

Not at all easy days.

 

Seeds that were sown in early days,

Slowly watered and given praise,

Mature into a fine young tree,

Strong and tall for all to see.

 

So the cycle of life starts again,

An older mother watches the younger mum's pain,

She lends a knowing loving ear,

The next generation she will hold dear.

 

For all the ups and downs we live,

The kids we love and always forgive,

The hard times melt into a vague past,

The bonds formed in childhood will always last.

 

A mother's love will never fade,

No matter who or what her child has made,

It's grace that fills our heart,

Until the time for us to part,

And knowing our job has done,

We leave the next generation to finish what we've begun.

 

@Janelle Coombe 1994

 

I was asked by my church to write a mothers day to read and church and this is what God gave me. At the time my children would have been 4,6,and 8. rereading it now it is still true to what I believe motherhood is. The heart of a mother is the same in every nation rich or poor. We all want the best for our children and want to see them succeed and do better than we did.

 

I couldn't imagine the hardship of living in our Compassion countries, watching you children struggle to survive, not being able to put enough food on the table to feed them, not being able to take them to a doctor or provide them with medicine when they are sick, and having to hold them as they die from diseases that can be prevented simply or cured with the right drugs.

 

We can't fix everything but we can make a start one little child at a time."The Child Survival Program helps save the lives of babies and mothers in poverty by utilizing local churches to assist mothers of at-risk infants and toddlers. Mothers can give their children a fighting chance for healthy development with the supplies and training provided by the donations to this program"( Compassion Bloggers).

 

There are 20 countries to choose from 584 different centres. maybe this Mothers day your gift to the world could be a one off donation to a centre to give another mother the hope and way forward to provide her child with what we take for granted. Check out Compassion International Survival Programmes to see what is happening in these centres around the globe.

 

 

 

 





World Malaria Day

I'm not an Aussie Mozzie!

 Well here I am finally out of the water, I’ve spent weeks as a wriggler foraging around my puddle eating little bits of this and that , but now I’m an adult , got my wings and want to fly!!! WOOOO

Aussie Mozzie

 Are yes, the world is a beautiful place from up in the air, I’m definitely in a great climate. The air is warm, lots of rain, mostly a shower each afternoon and a feast of good food all around me.

 Well there is plenty of food for me but many other species here look lean and hungry, especially the humans. Where my puddle is the humans look particularly weak and ill, over the hill the humans look better but I can’t sip their sweet blood because they have fortresses to live in. They have glass in their windows and flywire on their windows and door for when they want to leave them open to let the cooling breeze through. Even if I do sneak through a hole or crack these humans have their beds covered with nets and have smelly stuff burning that will kill or repel me. They even spray the puddles to kill our wrigglers so they never meet us!



 Its much easier near my puddle. These humans have small houses full of hole to sneak in, they don’t have glass or fly wire, most of them don’t even have a mosquito net. When the sun goes down I and my friends are really hungry but we don’t have to wait long, just avoid the cooking fires smoke and we soon find a tiny child or older person to feed on. You see females of my species need that rich blood to feed on so we can lay hundreds more eggs in that muddy puddle that is our job in life and once we lay our eggs our job is done and we die as we have no more work to do. Its a bit sad really we don’t enjoy long life like the humans.

Malaria Areas in Red

 But I have heard it said that these humans don’t always enjoy a long life either, especially those who live near my puddle. They say that our bite has the potential to kill, especially if the humans can’t afford the medicine to treat the malaria we give them. The people over the hill are ok if they are bitten, they have doctors and hospitals and medicine to make them well. Malaria kills 655.000 children a year, they too had only short lives, their deaths could have been prevented if their parents could afford the treatment once they were sick. If they had been able to buy a mosquito net in the first place they probably would never have got sick.

 But the people by the puddle have no access to these things, they just get tireder and sicker after we bite them, little children die in their mothers arms, mothers and fathers die leaving children alone or in the care of others.

 If I was an Aussie Mozzie I would just be annoying and cause an itch spot. They don’t make people sick just itchy. Sadly most mosquitoes are not like this especially in the developing world, they are deadly carrying Malaria, which kills a person every minute of every day many of these being children.

 This does not need to happen, Malaria is preventable and curable. A $10 mosquito net will protect a family while they sleep. Quinine is readily available but needs to be given free of charge to all suffering from malaria.

 You could change the life of a child, or a family by donating a few dollars to the Malaria Intervention on the Compassion International site. Your few dollars provide households with mosquito nets, education on prevention, treatment for those suffering from malaria and dengue fever. Will you make a difference, give a child a chance to stay healthy, complete their schooling and play a part in a better world for their community.

 

Autumn Folder for our Compassion Children

Front cover

Here in Tasmania the days are getting shorter and the temperature is dropping as we approach Autumn and then another long winter. As many of my Compassion children only have two seasons, “the wet and the dry” I decided to create some folders for them about Autumn in Tasmania.

To start I folded an A3 piece of light card in half. Using www.pizap.com I created a collage of myself, the child and 2 photos I had from my garden last Autumn. This I had printed at the local BigW so I had a large glossy A5 size photo for the cover. The Autumn title was created by using a photo as the background and writing the title over it then printing it with a normal printer.

 Inside the folder I used 4 photos from last Autumn taken in our gardens and added a little bible verse I found on the internet. (sorry I can’t remember where I found it). The leaf I made by doing a crayon rubbing over a leaf on thin good quality paper. The little coloured Autumn leaves were from a craft shop.

centre pages



back cover

 On the back I used a bit of wrapping paper with Pooh and Piglet just for fun. The leaf collage was also using

www.pizap.com

 but just printed from a printer. I also added a photo of my grandson playing in the Autumn leaves last year. For the older children aged 15 to 19 I will just send this and an autumn bookmark from www.avtivityvillage.com.uk.

 

 For the younger children I have attached with tape a yellow paper page to the edge of the folder and then folded it inside the folder. On this I have stuck puzzles, games etc.

 

 

 

 

 For the very little ones aged 4-6 I added 2 colouring pages (reduced in size by a photocopier) an apple maze and a game of dominoes which came all from www.activityvillage.com.au.

 Also a bookmark. The little activity booklet came from Scholastic Australia as part of a black liner set on Autumn they sell for $10.

 For the7-10 year olds I used the same yellow page set up but I put more difficult puzzles and a set of little Autumn symbol cards ( from Scholastics.au)to be coloured, a book mark and the activity book. One of the puzzles required them to use colour by numbers and as most of my children speak other languages I used a coloured pencil to circle the numbers with the right colour so they will know which colour to use without having to read the words.

 For the 11-14 year olds I have sent a very complicated apple maze, bookmark, Autumn Mandala and the Autumn activity book. The mandala’s came from

www.akidsheart.com.

 There are also some good resources at

                                                          www.education.com

                                                          and www.sparklebox

                                                                           for Autumn ideas.

Hope this gives others some ideas for making your precious children something to enjoy and treasure.

 

 

Easter Fun for Primary School Age Children

Easter time is a time of celebration for both children and  adults and what better time to make a special Easter gift for your sponsor child.

 

This Easter I made some mini lapbooks for my children and my daughters children. I found my daughter hadn’t sent hers off yet, I thought it might give others an idea so I am posting them here.

 

Middle page spread

I used a sheet of A3 paper folded almost in half leaving a tiny piece of paper to make the flap to close the book. I used www.loonapix to create the photo on the front and added the blessing at the bottom.

 

 My daughter has yet to add her child's  name to the front with their Compassion number.

 

Inside I put a mixture of puzzles, colouring in sheets, little books. book marks, and a bunny mobile they can make. Most of these things came from www.activityvillage.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

  I printed and laminated the book mark and wrote a message to each child on the book marks.

 

 The Easter pictures came from

 

www.mesenglish.com .

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Easter mini books came from  www.BibleStoryPrintables.com.

 

Other bits came from :-

 

www.kaboose.com

www.abcteaching.com

 

Many of the sheets I reduced their size on a photocopier  so I could layer them on top of each other on a page.

 

 

On the back page I used a piece of Easter writing paper to send each child a letter asking them about how they celebrate Easter and telling them what our family does at Easter time.

 

Giving a Child confidence in their worth!

Poverty takes away a child's worth, their belief and hope that they are special that they are an important to others and to God. Poverty strips them of hope and they wallow in despaired without Gods love to sustain them. Many of my Compassion children are from large families, desperately poor, their parents are working to provide something for their children's needs but often have to be away from their homes for long periods to find work. Many of the children have fathers who have abandoned them and gone from their lives leaving the mother to provide for 1 to 8 children. There is little time for children to be children, to be nurtured and loved. Life is about survival for many of these families.

 A sad example of this came from one of my 11 year olds in Ecuado this weekr, she asked me to pray for her friend also 11. Her father had left the family some time ago and married another woman, the mother had taken off to Italy (she didn’t say why) and left the 11 year old and a 3 year old sister in the home alone. The little 11 year old is looking after the little sister and the father wants nothing to do with them, he gives her bus money to get to school and that is it.

 Can you imagine how tough it would be for both those little girls, my child says that the little 3 year old won’t eat because she is missing her mother so much. I have no idea how they are getting food or what happens to the 3 year old while the older sister is at school. What worth would these children feel they are, neither parent want them they are left to struggle on their own at age 11 and 3. They need far more than my prayers and they are just 2 of the millions of children facing this life each day.

 When I write to my children I always try to encourage them, give them hope and let them know they are precious to God and to me. I came across a site called  http://www.imagechef.com which is free and you can do all sorts of tricks with pictures and words. They have a section called word art which allows you to write a short sentence and it repeats it into a shape. I used a heart for the girls and a cross for the boys. On the girls I wrote “To (child’s name) with love” and added a star and a heart to the sentence.  For the boys I wrote “ God Bless you (child's name)” and added a cross and a star.

 On the back I added their photo and wrote

 

Children are a gift from the Lord: they are a reward from Him. Psalm 127: 3

(Childs name) you are a gift from God.

 

I hope these words will enter their hearts and stay with them always no matter what they face in life.

 

Which Bible Verse Prompts You to Serve?

As I pondered the question asked of Compassion Bloggers, I find there is no one verse, but in fact many or rather the whole New Testament where Jesus calls us all to serve as He did.

 

“Love thy neighbour as yourself”

(Luke 10:27)

 

These words appears numerous times in the New testament and have been words that have been seeded deep in my heart since I was a child. I expect the question asked many times has been who is my neighbour and Jesus would answer “who ever I put before you”, adult, child, from any nation -they may be beside you in a shop or they may be the innocent face of a child trapped in poverty, hungry and cold waiting to find a sponsor.

 

Graham Kendrick wrote a song in 1984 “The Servant King” and God has used this song in my heart to call me to serve Him. The words are the most powerful lyrics I have heard reminding us that Gods son came to earth to serve and that is what we are also called to do, when we serve others we are serving God.

 

“Chorus: This is our God, the servant king,

He calls us now to follow Him,

To bring our lives as a daily offering,

Of worship to the servant king.

 

Verse 4: So let us learn how to serve,

And in our lives enthrone Him,

Each other’s needs to prefer,

For it is Christ we are serving”

 

As a child I wanted to be a missionary working with the children in the developing world. Although that never happened I knew those children were my passion, my calling. I may not have reached those distant shores but have always sponsored children. The day I received my very first pay I sponsored my first child Carla from Honduras. Over the 14 years I sponsored her my love for theses beautiful children trapped in poverty grew. I knew God wanted me to do more but felt He was calling me to something else, not the group I was sponsoring with. I stumbled on Compassion International one night (maybe not stumbled but guided by God) and I knew a new adventure was about to begin, this is where God wanted me to be.

 

 I sponsored two little girls and discovered a whole new meaning to writing to your children. Wess Stafford's vision of helping children matched my own and the fire in me began to grow. I discovered Compassion had a correspondence programme for children sponsored by people who couldn’t or didn’t want to write and enquired about being a correspondent for Compassion. In a very short time God filled my life with many beautiful children that He wanted me to share His love with and my Compassion family continues to grow.

 

If you had said to me a few years ago, in 5 years time you will sponsor several children and write to almost 30, I would have laughed and said that wouldn’t be possible there was no way I could do that as I wouldn’t have the time or resources for all those children. The more time I give to the Lord to encourage His precious children the more time I seem to have, the letters I receive bless me far more than these little ones can know and makes me very humble that God has entrusted me with these remarkable children millions of miles away.

 

Blogging is my next step in serving our Lord, maybe I can inspire others to give of their time and a little of their money to one of God’s precious children enabling them to have a chance to thrive and make a difference in their world. We can’t all be missionaries but we can all make a difference “one child at a time”. To give your life to God and be His servant brings more joy and rewards than anything given in earthly terms and a peace knowing that you can make a difference.